


I-65

by fallencrest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future Fic, Incest, M/M, Post-Series, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John comes back to life, years after his death, after the apocalypse, all of it, he and Dean have to piece it all back together - they have to decide whether they can trust each other and work out what they want. And maybe John doesn't know what brought him back but maybe they don't have to talk about it yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I-65

It's weird, waking back up in his old skin after all those years. Everything feels— it doesn't feel _different_ , it's just, he can feel again, John Winchester can feel again. After hell, there was just this big, long nothing. It seems strange that it registers at all but somehow it's obvious that it's a matter of years he's lost to the void. 

He would have expected it to feel fuzzy, waking up again after all that time, but it doesn't: it feels immediate. There's an oppressive edge of grogginess somewhere in the forefront of his mind but it's offset by the fact that everything's so vivid. The motel room curtains are drawn but the light seeping through them burns, pierces, around the eyes. It's almost a relief to feel the stab of it, that little edge of pain which assures him that he's alive, and something in his mind prompts 'human', 'normal'. 

He stumbles through the first few days, John Winchester, remembering, piecing it together. He doesn't call anyone, not at first, because he knows they'd ask him questions that he can't answer yet. The hows and whys of it haven't fallen back into place yet. Someone might have wished him back, pulled him back into his skin without his consent; but, if they had, he figured they'd've shown their face by now. There are no familiar faces though - it's not even a familiar town. It must be one of the only towns in America he's never had a hunt in. So, he stops and just lets himself breathe a few days.

Even when he's ready to give up and call for help, he has no phone numbers; nothing to go on at all. He gave his journal to Dean before the hunt for Yellow Eyes, he gave Dean the car; and, when he died, he left the world with nothing - not even a body to call his own. 

He runs the back of his palm over his face and thinks they must have burnt his body - how could they not have burnt his body? But they can't have, not this body, not his, because it's all the same. He doesn't have the scars or the fillings anymore and that's— there's something not right about that - but it's his body, emphatically the same: his skin again; him in it, again.

He still can't bring himself to make the phone call but he does fill in a credit card form in a diner, paying for coffee out of one of the fifties he'd made the previous night hustling pool. He has to get back on the road, get into town, get out of dodge, get back to— well, whatever he's got to get back to. 

Most of his ports of call - looking up other hunters' aliases in phonebooks - get him nothing. He drives out to the Roadhouse, near 400 miles, in a hunk of scrap metal from a second-hand dealership and something in him breaks when he sees it, burned to the ground, even though he'd spent the whole trip sure he wouldn't be able to face Ellen when he got there. 

It's there, looking at the scorched earth where the Roadhouse used to be, that he tries it - tries dialling just about the only phone number he can remember. He never was that good at remembering phone numbers, never really needed to be, and it's not like you have to dial your own all that often, but he'd given that one number out to enough people that he remembers it now. It had been the one constant line he'd kept, given to people he'd helped, and he dials it.

It rings for a long time. It rings so long that he half-believes it's gone to voicemail when the ringing stops, and he doesn't say anything, just waits for his own voice to play back to him, a voicemail message from another lifetime. But the voicemail message doesn't play: there's a voice talking to him down the line and it's not his own; the voice isn't his and it's undeniable, irrevocable, and just like a punch to the gut.

It's kind of gravely, says "hello" like there's nothing in it, part-suspicion, no hope, but it's Dean and Dean was always good at pretending not to care.

"Dean?"

It's an easy question, one he already knows the answer to, but he's hoping Dean will say 'Dad' with all the hope Dean had always had, that absolute belief in him which had never wavered. Only what Dean says is: "Who are you?" all suspicion this time, guard all the way up, like John's a monster and not a man at all.

"It's me, Dean, your father, I—"

All Dean says before he hangs up is that his father is dead.

He could call again but he knows how this goes, knows how he'd taught Dean to need proof, knows how bad this must look. The part of him that turned hard, knotted, and broken, when Mary died is proud of the boy; the rest of him just hurts.

He puts together the paperwork, he goes to the police station and he gets his GPS activated. It's all pretty easy, like slipping back into your own clothes, like working a case. Only this isn't hunting monsters - hunting monsters was easier than this because then he didn't have to think about his son, (his sons), think about the distance of time and years and miles between them. 

He knows how it goes. He has a silver knife in his pocket but he won't blame Dean if he wants to make the cut himself, his own trusted blade to hand; he knows that's how he'd do it. It's hard to know your own son's going to look at you and see a monster, and he remembers the way that Yellow Eyes had been in here with him, beneath his skin. He remembers thinking, then, that dying would be easier and not just because it would mean the death of the thing he'd been chasing all those years.

The thing is, he doesn't have answers to any of the questions yet. He doesn't know why he's here, doesn't know whether he's part-man, part-monster, only that he doesn't feel like a monster, only that he feels like John Winchester, and that he's tried the silver knife already and it didn't feel worse than any other cut. Holy water just tastes like water and when he says the name of god, whispers it, builds it into normal speech, he feels nothing. 

All he knows is that he's alive and he's driving across state-lines to Dean. 

(He doesn't think about Sam, doesn't let himself, because he heard things down in hell, about their plans for him, and he'd meant it when he'd told Dean he might have to kill his brother - he'd meant it and he's long since given up on hope.)

He waits outside Dean's motel for an hour before he goes in and asks at the desk. When he finally knocks on Dean's door, the Dean who answers it is halfway to drunk and says, "I saw you outside, I was waiting. I—" 

And John has nothing to say about the half empty bottle of whiskey on the table even though he knows what he ought to say. He ought to say that, if his son thinks him a monster (which he should) then he shouldn't have been drinking. Nothing they've ever fought could take the form of a dead man quite like this, so Dean's already at a disadvantage: he shouldn't be leaving himself open like this. John could argue all this, wants to, because this is his son and he needs to prepare him for this, only- only those days are gone, far gone, a lifetime away (two, maybe) and John understands. He imagines what he'd do if it were him and there was Sam or Dean or Mary waiting outside in the lot. 

He finds his mouth forming words, telling Dean to do whatever he has to do. "I'm your father, Dean. I don't know how I got back but everything before that I remember—" doesn't say what he remembers because there's too much to say and there aren't enough words.

_

The thing is that Dean's shaking and he's scared and he thought he'd feel differently, angry somehow. He spent years telling Sam, telling anyone who'd listen, that he hated the guy, his father, for what he'd done, for making him into this self without a self, for everything. He'd spent years being angry, almost as many years being angry as he'd spent being the good son, following orders. He thought he might enjoy killing the monster version of his father, some great big effigy he could torch and pretend it might put things to rest. Only— only, well, it isn't like that. 

There's this man in the doorway of his motel room and he looks tired and he looks like John, looks like dad back from a hunt. And Dean feels almost like he did when he was a kid, relieved, because John was days later than he'd planned to be, because Dean had thought John was dead. It had been years this time, not a half week of worry and no cash left to pay for the room, and Dean had burnt the body himself, only— shit. 

The word tumbles from his lips without his permission, hopeful, scared, "dad," then he steps away from the door and lets John cross the salt line, into the space under the devil's trap. 

_

It's like unlocking doors, one test at a time. Dean won't go near him for a while, slides the silver blade across the floor to him, a shot glass of holy water across the tacky motel table (it almost tips over, catching on a part-dry whiskey spill, and the water tastes of whiskey and the shadow of Dean's breath on the glass).

They don't talk while they do this. There's an understanding, years of partnership, of 'you go in and I'll watch your back', years of fear and suspicion and trust.

They're stood in silence, they've run out of tests, when Dean says "got any other ideas?" and John wants to say "that I'm me, that it's just-" but he doesn't let himself say it because that's what a monster would say. He just tells Dean "I'm all out," because there's nothing else to say and the silence lingers. 

There's no room for grand gestures, for love, for acceptance, family, hope, belief where there's room for doubt; not in a world where anything could be a monster, could be trying to kill you, and usually is.

There isn't trust, and there aren't grand gestures, not that first night. That first night is the interrogation. Dean doesn't ask his father what he gave him for his sixteenth birthday, doesn't play family trivia. Instead, with a voice which it hurts to hear, he says, "tell me, about hell," and John didn't know, not before, not until the tone in Dean's voice, and he tries to ask, because his son, his own son, in the pit, but Dean cuts him off by asking again and hearing him say it hurts enough that John has to answer. 

They talk all night, start off swapping stories about Alastair and trying to laugh about it even though it hurts to. Dean doesn't tell John, not then, can't tell him - even if it is a monster and not his father (especially if it's a monster and not his father) - how he broke, how he's worse than Alastair, how he liked the feel of a knife in his hands because it was like being in control of the whole damn universe (and it was, Christ, that was the worst thing).

John is careful not to ask questions, not the direct kind, even though there are things he wants to know (needs to know) about the space between here and the hospital, here and the devil's gate cracking open. He knows how many years it's been, knows things are far from the same, but he knows, too, that these are just the questions a monster would ask to get a fix on Dean's movements, to ascertain his weaknesses.

He does ask Dean if he burnt the body, his body, and Dean promises he had, he and Sam, all those years back, like John would have wanted. 

"So, then, how d'you figure I got back?" It's a simple question, simply stated, the most direct John can muster.

"Beats me. When Castiel dragged my ass outta hell, I had to crawl right back out of the grave Sam put me in. Good as new, mind you, no scars, no badly set bones, none of it."

John tells him how he had the same thing, minus the grave, and asks Dean why in hell Sam hadn't burnt his body like he should have. The conversation skirts around Sam for a while after that, as though Dean can't stand to admit that John was right about Sam being a monster, right that Dean should have killed him, but that Dean couldn't (wouldn't) do it. It's obvious enough, what with everything else, all the awkward pauses and the bombshells he drops as though they're nothing, but there's a pretence, a pretence that Sam's Sam and nothing's new (which is true, in a way) and John doesn't push the issue. Dean's the one holding all the cards here.

It's a long night and there's a whole lot of whiskey and John has to ask Dean whether he wants him to go someplace else to sleep. Dean just says he won't be sleeping for a while and shrugs. Still, he dozes off about a half hour after John does. 

_

There's light coming through the thin motel curtains when Dean wakes up in the armchair he'd passed out in and it takes him a minute to remember the reason he's not asleep in the bed. 

There's something reassuring, like a childhood memory, in seeing John there, asleep just like after a hunt, and he smiles before he can stop himself. 

He doesn't know what to do so he just goes out and gets breakfast (though it's past midday) and two cups of coffee and when John wakes up to the sound of Dean closing the door on his way back in, Dean lets him drink the coffee before he asks him the one thing he should have asked last night. 

In everything John had said, there had been fragments of the story, of going to the Roadhouse, say, but he hadn't told Dean how he thought he'd got back in his body and Dean hadn't wanted to ask. He didn't want to question it, hated the suspicion and the doubt and knew whatever tale John told would only make it worse. He wants it all to be above-board, because dad sounds like dad and acts like him, and because he doesn't want to lose him again. But he asks, he has to ask, because illusions are dangerous and he's sober and it's a new day and something has to be done.

John tells him the story. He tells Dean how he'd woken up in a motel room in some back-roads town, just off the I-65, 13 days ago. He tells Dean that the only thing weird about it was that he knew he'd been dead and that the motel clerk had insisted he'd been there for two nights, rather than one; but he says, he'd figured, maybe it just took him a while to wake up after being dead for that long. He didn't know what he'd done with that time and it was unsettling, but everything about the situation was, really, so he didn't think too much about it. 

Dean listens and he hates himself for hoping, in spite of everything, that this might not be something terrible and sinister and wrong but the hope's breeding an idea in the back of his mind, a thought he can't voice yet. He offers John half-baked stories, suggests things which aren't the hope he's harbouring. 

Still, the hope grows, the kind of hope Dean hasn't felt since before John died and maybe it's just that - John being there - that causes it, makes the hope come back. 

He knows he shouldn't but, instead of dealing with it, Dean scours the papers for a job. It isn't long before he's found one: two suspicious deaths in Minnesota. When he mentions it to John, he says nothing about going their separate ways and John knows better than to question it.

It isn't until they've done the job and another one after that (a werewolf in Lansing), that John asks why Dean's letting him hang around. Dean's still nursing his ridiculous hope, burning for it to be true, but he doesn't say it, not in so many words, instead he shrugs and tells a half-truth, says: "I decided it was probably just an angel pulling some shit. Didn't think any of them still cared but I guess there are still some of them around." 

It's the truth, he thinks, only there are a lot of things he doesn't say: lame things about angels giving a damn about him, personally; things about answered prayers which he could never tell anyone - because Dean Winchester does not pray (not unless he's trying to contact his own, specific, angel radio and even that's been a while). 

John doesn't ask the hard-hitting questions, doesn't interrogate Dean the way Dean was afraid he might. Instead, he says: "You're really going to have to explain this whole angel thing to me," and doesn't take his eyes off the road. 

"That's years and years worth of mess," Dean says but starts the story anyway because maybe there's time, after all, and if he's going to trust John then he might as well tell him what he needs to know and, besides, maybe once he's gone through it again it will all make sense.

So he tells John about the angels and about the apocalypse. He tells it in brief and then he fills in the details. He tries not to tell him how much it all hurt and how it nearly destroyed him and Sam (how it did destroy them, after all). 

He doesn't talk about the way he'd felt about any of it, not about Sam and certainly not about John, not about the resentment and the anger he'd felt towards John and towards everything (towards the empty space John had left and how that had changed everything). 

He doesn't tell John about the end of that resentment.

He doesn't say that, two weeks back, he'd finished up a job in Indiana and passed out in a motel off I-65. He doesn't say that it had been then he'd realised that, for the first time in years, he wasn't angry, not at John, not at anything. He'd drunk more than he should have, as if that might scour away the strangeness of the feeling, and woken up with a hell of a hangover wishing he could have John back, wishing things were as simple as that, and he'd wanted it - the way he rarely wanted anything. 

He'd lain there, head pounding, thinking about how that had been the thing that had broken him - John's death, not having anyone to believe in anymore, only a brother he was forced to be suspicious of. He'd been angry and lost because he'd needed John through all of it and now here he was, past all of it, only just realising that had been what he'd needed all along.

He'd passed out again, that morning, after thinking about it for what felt like hours. Then he'd cleared out in the evening without paying the bill, just driven right on and forgotten about it because forgetting was the only worthwhile thing to do and because wishing isn't meant to be worth anything.

There's no way he can say it, not without explaining how he'd hated John for years, hated him for being dead and for how everything in his life had turned out. And it's impossible to admit that he'd wanted John back that badly - but he had.

And, because he can't voice any of it, he just proves the truth of it - the fact that he needs John around - in his own way, by keeping John around. It's different now, it couldn't not be, but it works and that's different, too, after years of everything broken beyond repair. So he tells John about the angels and keeps his theory to himself, and they keep driving and they keep on just being and it works. And maybe it was angels and maybe it wasn't but, whoever fixed it, it isn't broken anymore.

It's awkward sometimes, navigating the space between them, redefining everything to try to make sense of the things that have changed. Dean's been hunting longer than John now, must have been, and the car's his car, but he still trusts John more than he trusts himself. And sometimes they get drunk and wonder why the hell they're still doing this, after everything, and they try to laugh it off when they realise it's because they have nothing else. 

They're on a hunt Shreveport when they get into a fight about how they're going to deal with this particularly malicious poltergeist. They start yelling and Dean isn't sure whether he shoved John first or not but they're too close together, breathing too heavily, and all Dean can think to do is kiss John. It was a stupid thing to do, Dean knows, and they don't talk about it afterwards. And, it takes a while before Dean realises that John's following Dean's plan, getting the family out of the house before they deal with the poltergeist. And he wonders how the fuck he won the argument.

They can almost pretend the kiss never happened. They manage it pretty effectively until they're bandaging each other up after a hunt and neither one can look the other in the eye. They're kind of close and maybe they're touching too much, hands lingering over skin more than they should. 

Dean looks up and meets John's eye and some part of his brain decides it's a good idea to kiss him again. They clasp at each other, hands gripping each other's arms, and it's desperate and a little frantic and they both wish they were drunker and that their hands weren't shaking whenever they let go even for a second. 

Neither of them talk about that afterwards, either. But, afterwards, when they get drunk together, they don't talk about why they're still hunting anymore, don't talk at all, just find different ways of pressing hands and mouths to skin. 

And maybe it's weird or hard to explain but so are monsters and a trunk full of guns and rock salt. 

_

When they meet up with Sam, there's a moment when they can't meet each other's eyes the way they ought to - but it's only a moment. Sam seems to think everything is normal because that's always how it was: John and Dean, with little Sammy something quite apart, sat on the other side of the table, never quite told everything. There's something natural in that, closeness and distance, and in the way Sam says "must be nice for you, having him back", when John's out of earshot, and Dean says "yeah, yeah, it is" and means it more strongly than he can put into words.

And maybe it's not the kind of life anyone would have imagined for them, and maybe there are bad days, but it's better than anything else Dean can imagine, better than he thinks he deserves.


End file.
